Apollodorus used wooden arches, each spanning , set on twenty masonry pillars made of bricks, mortar, and
pozzolana cement. It was built unusually quickly (between 103 and 105), employing the construction of a wooden
caisson for each pier. Apollodorus applied the technique of river flow relocation, using the principles set by
Thales of Miletus some six centuries beforehand. Engineers waited for a low water level to dig a canal, west of the modern downtown of Kladovo. The water was redirected downstream from the construction site, through the lowland of , to the location of the modern village of
Mala Vrbica. Wooden pillars were driven into the river bed in a rectangular layout, which served as the
foundation for the supporting
piers, which were coated with clay. The hollow piers were filled with stones held together by
mortar, while from the outside they were built around with
Roman bricks. The bricks can still be found around the village of Kostol, retaining the same physical properties that they had 2 millennia ago. The piers were tall, wide and apart. It is considered today that the bridge construction was assembled on the land and then installed on the pillars. A mitigating circumstance was that the year the relocating canals were dug was very dry and the water level was quite low. The river bed was almost completely drained when the foundation of the pillars began. There were 20 pillars in total in an interval of .
Oak wood was used and the bridge was high enough to allow ship transport on the Danube. The bricks also have a historical value, as the members of the
Roman legions and
cohorts which participated in the construction of the bridge carved the names of their units into the bricks. Thus, it is known that work was done by the legions of
IV Flavia Felix,
VII Claudia,
V Macedonica and
XIII Gemina and the cohorts of I Cretum, II Hispanorum, III Brittonum and I Antiochensium. == Destruction and remains ==